Tag Archives: brownies

It’s like baby fever except I don’t get to eat for two in order to acquire said baby.

Our baby cat is almost EIGHT months old. She’s like, a real cat now. A small real cat, but a real one.

She’s such a big girl we left her home for FOUR nights over Thanksgiving. Wwell, with visits from Brad

Who is her new best friend I’ve been told. (Mrs Wookie, recognize our cat sitter?)

She’s so grown up that I’m pretty sure we’re ready for a new baby cat to play with.

I’m ignoring the fact that even having one results in my tree getting undecorated
My mantle getting redecorated
(how did she even DO that? I’m a little impressed)

And awkward staring while I try to eat.

That face? It’s her “I love you and if you move your arm too quickly I might think it needs to be pounced on”

She looks cute but seriously
She’s not all there.

To quell my baby fever, I baked.

And I didn’t just bake anything. I baked baby brownies.

I made up some easy peasy brownies
And put them into the baby muffin pan
And because I cannot leave well enough alone, I took some chocolate chips
And melted them, with butter and cream

(Um. ok. I was out of cream and used coffee creamer. Let’s pretend I don’t make this sub all the time, ok? It works!)

And put a little chocolate hat on each one
Such sweet little babies
(See the creamer in the background? I wasn’t joking)

I could just eat them up.
Which, you know, is frowned upon with real baby animals. So this is probably for the best.

Although I think that baby cat is plotting to eat these when I leave for work
Watch it girl. I saw what you did to the last cookies I made. Baby animals may not be for eating but you’re almost grown up. We did name you Takeout after all….

When I student taught kindergarten, one of the things my cooperating teacher would say a lot was “easy peasy”

The kids would then add “lemon squeezy” and laughhh their little heads off.

She’d use the phrase after showing what they’d be doing; “so you draw a picture of the setting in the story, then write a sentence about it. Easy Peasy”

I realized after a while, she was tricking the kids. Not everything was easy peasy. But the biggest thing that stops kids is thinking something will be hard. We do it as adults too-if it seems hard, or labor intensive, or whatever else, we’re likely to try and skip it.

I used to rarely rarely make brownies. They involved too many dishes-melting the butter, putting the chocolate on a double boiler. I’m a messy enough cook already, I didn’t want more to clean up.

But brownies are delicious.

So I set out to make them easy peasy.

Easy Peasy Brownies

1/2 c oil

1/2 c brown sugar

1/2 c white sugar

2 eggs

splash of vanilla (i pour it into the lid, i guess it’s about a teaspoon or so?)

dash of salt

1/4 t baking powder

1/3 c cocoa powder

1/2 c whole wheat pastry flour

about 1/2 c chopped up chocolate or mini chocolate chips

Heat the oven to 350

Mix up the oil, sugar, and vanilla

Add eggs and stir

Add in flour

(Whole wheat = healthy. So you can eat half the pan. Right?)

Cocoa powder

(I buy the Trader Joe’s because it has a pretty canister)

Salt and baking powder. Stir.

Chop up chocolate

or use mini chocolate chips. The idea is to add little extra bits of delicious in there, rather than full on making chocolate chip brownies.

Mix all together, and pour into a greased square pan.

Bake until a toothpick comes out clean, about 25 minutes.

Easy peasy
The best part? It takes maybe 5 minutes to mix this up. And if you set the tray in the freezer when it’s done, their cool enough to eat in just a few minutes. So in under 45 minutes you have brownies.
This is extra good as the pan has a pesky habit of going from full to this
Way too fast

What’s something you avoid doing because it feels like it’ll be to much work?

In my head the dishwasher takes foreveeeer to unload, so I always put off doing it.

Thanks for all the great feedback on the baking! I’ll get recipes up for them soon-both the buns and the brownies are fab, and not too terribly difficult. But awesome cause most people don’t make either from scratch.

Also awesome because chocolate is awesome.

I had a great day of small people yesterday. I student taught kindergarten, which is good because otherwise I’d wonder if I was doing a terrible, terrible job when I taught them. Cause at least half the day you feel like you’re herding kittens when you teach 5 year olds.

I got myself ready to face the small people with tea and spelt bread (with nana and pb on top!)

And I packed up a lunch.

There were cheese and whole grain ritz, apple slices, PB, a crack orange, salad with lentils and balsamic in the little container (so they didn’t get soggy) and a brownie

I try and pack some thing that are snackable so that if I’m starving partway through the day there are things I can quickly and discreetly chomp on.

The fiance isn’t feeling so hot, so we stopped for some of this on the way home

I microwaved a mug of it last night-yummy! Needed some more spices but it amused me. And it’s not that scary creamsicle color that starbucks pumpkin spice is. (Have you ever noticed that? There’s a weird orange tinge to it)

We had curry for dinner

I love curry. This was just things we had in the house thrown together-carrots, spinach, peas, chicken, lenils, and potatoes on top of brown rice.

Love you curry. Love you.

I made some brownies to go in the fiance’s lunches. And we ate some. You know, for quality control. Can’t send him to work with bad brownies.

… isn’t right now. But, right now is the time where I can and will eat everything I see. (Except samples of go-gurt at Costco. That stuff is gross.)

After wandering Fred Meyer for a good half hour the fiance asked me what on earth I was looking for. “Something delicious and salty. Or maybe sweet. Maybe we should get bacon? And a cookie? And some chips? Oh and ice cream!”

Awesome. Thanks hormones. I reminded myself of important facts (Facts that were more along the lines of “Those cookies are not tasty, and will make your tummy hurt” and “you’re not going to be patient enough to cook bacon when you’re suddenly craving salt” than “An apple would be a healthier choice!”) I got whole grain Ritz (which I am pretending means they’re good for me, don’t burst that bubble) and this

Which I tore into as soon as we got home. (Not going to lie, I was staring jealously at the 3 year old who had convinced her mom to open a pack of goldfish crackers in the store. Mmm store food).

Yum! Isn’t the plate cute? When we moved in together we kept mostly my dishes because they weren’t ugly matched and got rid of almost all the fiance’s stuff-this plate was one of the only things we kept. We’ve got bowls that match too.

Of course, cheese and crackers won’t be enough. I need…. more cheese!

Well, cream cheese that is. On brownies. Mmmmm.

(If you make cream cheese brownies all you do is make normal brownies, and then for the cream cheese part it’s just an egg, 1/3 c sugar, and 8 oz of cream cheese all beaten together spooned on top)

So much cream cheese-y goodness!

While the brownies cook I decidedly cried. Because the fiance had used the wrong garbage bag in the kitchen garbage can. Ah hormones.

Now the fiance is making dinner (I think in hopes I won’t start crying again) and I’m eating this: